Baton Rouge -- The state Board of Ethics on Friday overruled its own staff's recommendation that Kira Orange Jones be forced to choose between serving on Louisiana's top education board and keeping her day job as head of the New Orleans branch of Teach For America.

Kira Orange Jones

The decision, which received unanimous support from the eight board members at Friday's meeting, hinged on arguments made by Orange Jones' lawyer that she served more as a supervisor than a decision-maker for the nonprofit teaching organization, which has annually received approval for a $1 million contract with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Attorney James Babst successfully argued that this arrangement allows Orange Jones to fit into a exemption carved out in previous rulings by the board allowing rank-and-file employees to serve on boards that have contractual relationships with their employer. The exemption should apply despite Orange Jones' title of "executive director," he said.

"This board's ruling should turn on the substance of it and not the mere nomenclature," Babst said.

Orange Jones was elected with strong support from Gov. Bobby Jindal, among others. Jindal also appointed seven of the 11 members of the Ethics Board. As required by law, Jindal's appointments came from lists of nominees drawn up by the presidents of the state's private universities and colleges.

The board's attorneys tried to make a case that Orange Jones qualified as a key officer in the nonprofit because of her role as head of the local office. The contract, which gets the sign-off of BESE and calls for training and support to 500 teachers, would be administered by Orange Jones' staff of 30.

"Within that system, I think she's an officer," Ethics Administration attorney Tracy Barker said. "I get a little concerned when we start expanding these exemptions."

The opinion used as a precedent for the exemption, which was written in 1982, allows individuals to serve on public bodies that have contractual relationships with their employers if four conditions are met: the person is a wage-earner or salaried employee; the person's pay would be unaffected by the status of the contract; the person does not have a controlling interest in the organization; and the person is not "an officer, director, trustee nor partner" in the non-governmental employer.

Both Ethics Administration staff and Babst agreed the first three points all describe Orange Jones. The fourth was the point of contention.

Throughout the meeting, Scott Schneider, a board member from Mandeville, suggested that Orange Jones' job was more like that of a branch manager for a national bank than that of an owner or a significant decision-maker within the organization.

The evidence presented by Babst included a TFA organizational chart that shows she is four steps down from the nonprofit's CEO. Asked whether she makes autonomous decisions for the New Orleans office, Orange Jones replied: "Many of my decisions are not entirely autonomous. I report to a supervisor in Chicago with six other directors."

TFA's annual contract calls on the organization to train teachers and offer them as candidates for employment to local schools. The contracts are technically between TFA and the Department of Education and the Recovery School District, but BESE must approve them.

The contract gets an up-or-down vote from BESE, which does not set any policies or procedures regarding how it is handled, Babst said. A different TFA employee is responsible for negotiating the contract, he said. Babst said during the meeting that Orange Jones would recuse herself from the actual votes on TFA's contract.

"By the way, Mr. Schneider, if it means anything, I'm pretty sure I can get TFA to change her title," Babst joked during the hearing.